Category: Persuasive Private Equity Pitches

Do you pitch to investors? If so, take a moment to answer these three questions: Are you a rational, logical decision-maker? Are the investors you pitch to rational, logical decision-makers? Do investors decide purely through conscious analysis of information? Surprisingly, the answer to all three questions is a clear ‘NO’.…

Are you looking for start-up funding, scale-up funding or new financing for your business? If so, you need to invest in creating the best investor pitch deck your prospective investor has seen. Really effective pitch decks are like great CVs. They won’t get you the job, but they might get…

Successful investor meetings come in all shapes and sizes. But underpinning all of them are a few basic truths. Check your own investor meeting against our five essential tests. 1. A successful investor meeting gets a clear story across Your business is complicated and your market is ever…

A great investor pitch book is at the heart of successful fundraising. It should capture the essence of your business or fund and make it easy for the reader to understand you. These days, a great pitch book is not a “nice to have”, it’s a “must have”. A better…

Does your Private Equity Pitch Book make prospective LPs sit up or switch off? LPs tell us they want to see simple, clear and brief pitch books, but many they see are the exact opposite. When we work with clients on their investor communications, there are six questions (amongst others)…

When an investor questions how you calculated your Private Equity fund's performance, how do you react? If an investor asks how many people left your VC Firm in the last 12 months, what do you say? Investors tell us that, too often, people avoid, second-guess or provide scrambled answers to…

How can you be seen as a top 1% fund by investors? At SuperReturn Emerging Markets in Amsterdam, experienced LPs and advisors shared their private equity fundraising tips and discussed what makes a fund stand out. On the panel were Will Poole of Capria, Guarau Ahuja of Chris Capital and…

What’s the most daunting part of speaking to investors? For many, it’s answering tough investor questions. It’s tricky to prepare for, as you don’t know exactly what they’ll ask. And, different investors approach questioning in different ways. So how do the most successful fundraising teams ensure that tough investor questions…

How do you make your investment pitch more memorable? It's a real challenge these days. Investors have more opportunities than ever to invest. So if you are pitching to investors, it's much harder to stand out. One essential strategy you want to deploy when pitching is to be more memorable.…

You are at a private equity conference. It’s one of those events, like SuperReturn, that's designed to help LPs and GPs meet. You want to identify LPs who may be interested in your private equity fund. Assuming you get a meeting with an investor (which is hard enough) how can…

While we wrote this piece with our Private Equity clients in mind, there are good lessons here for anyone pitching to investors or delivering new business pitches. What does it take to be one of 2017's deal-closers? During the past few months we’ve been quizzing investors about what successful fund managers…

Do you look forward to watching TV documentaries about science? For the majority of people, the reply is ‘no’. Put Professor Brian Cox at the centre of a series though, and the answer, for millions, becomes ‘yes’. The pop star of particle physics, Cox is undoubtedly the UK’s favourite -…

Investment decision-making is not totally rational. Are you using all the tools at your disposal to create and deliver persuasive investor presentations? Psychology researchers continually prove how incredibly susceptible humans are to unconscious influences. We can use subtle cues, signals and personal biases to nudge even the most experienced investor's decision-making. The impact of these…

A great elevator pitch is an essential part of your toolkit Last month I chaired the Quickfire Showcase at Berlin’s SuperReturn, the annual Private Equity Conference. Funds get just 90 seconds to pitch to a room full of investors, who collectively have over $100bn to invest. It's a high profile elevator…

Why use stories in your Private Equity pitches? Stories appeal to the right-hand side of the brain, bypassing the logical and judgemental left-hand side. We make decisions quickly and emotionally, then try to back them up rationally. Using stories in your private equity pitches gives you access to that emotional…

What do LPs want from private equity funds at first investor meetings? That's the question I put to the panel at SuperInvestor 2015, the annual conference for private equity decision makers. On the panel were Catherine Lewis La Torre, Anna Dayn, Spencer Miller and Marc der Kinderen. Between them, they see hundreds…

What is the best private equity pitch you've seen? That’s the question I put to my panel at SuperInvestor, the annual conference for private equity decision makers. I asked four LPs to talk about a great private equity pitch they remember - teams that did something different and grabbed attention. On the panel…

What are the private equity pitching mistakes most commonly made by fund managers? I asked the fundraising panel at the SuperInvestor 2015 conference which private equity pitching mistakes are made by fund managers time and again. On the panel were Catherine Lewis La Torre, Anna Dayn, Spencer Miller and Marc der Kinderen. Between…

How to lose respect and alienate investors I asked the LP panel at SuperInvestor 2015 what the worst private equity pitch they've ever seen was. On the panel were Catherine Lewis La Torre, Anna Dayn, Spencer Miller and Marc der Kinderen. Between them, they review 400 fund pitches every year and they’ve seen…

Advice, Coaching, Training

For 10 years the team at Benjamin Ball Associates have been supporting executives to improve how they Pitch, Present and Persuade. We specialise in transforming financial and leadership communications. We offer expert advice combined with presentation training, public speaking coaching and investor presentation consulting across Europe. Clients tell us we stand out because they get expert advice, practical help and fast results. Winner Best for Investor Presentation Coaching London – Alternative Investment Awards.